Darori, director general of forest protection and nature conservation at Indonesia`s Forestry Ministry, said the dialogue was to exchange information and knowledge on law enforcement, especially regarding regulations relating to illegal trade in wildlife and timber.
"We also want to strengthen formal and non formal cooperation in eradicating illegal trade in tigers, armadillos and other wildlife species," he said.
The dialogue was expected to result in the signing of a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in law enforcement, public awareness, human resources capacity building, training and coordination between the two parties.
Vietnam was considered to be a country often used by animal and plant smugglers as a stepping stone to ply their contraband in countries such as China.
For example, in every Indonesian anteater meat smuggling operation, the meat is auctioned off in Vietnam and given approval labels to be legally circulated in other countries, said Darori.
"Vietnam does not yet have a legal regime to deal with such cases," he said.
If the problem was not tackled immediately by forging law enforcement cooperation with other countries, it was feared Vietnam would become a haven for animal and plant smugglers.
In 2008-2009, Vietnam foiled three anteater meat smuggling attempts involving a total of 26 tons of the meat that had caused a loss of Rp27 billion to Indonesia.
In the 2009-2011 period, Indonesia was able to foil attempts to smuggle out 7,136 anteaters or 37 tons of anteater meat and 514 kg of anteater scales and thereby prevented the loss of Rp38 billion to the state.
Deputy Director of Vietnam Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Do Quang Tung said this country was eager to cooperate with Indonesia and would also like to study Indonesia`s legal system.
"We are also concerned about the smuggling of anteaters from Indonesia into Vietnam for slaughtering but we ourselves do not have laws the deal with the practice. Therefore, we also want to study the law in Indonesia," he said.
Indonesia`s Law No. 41 of 1999 on forestry obligates the government and all the people to protect forests and everything they contain as one of the country`s natural assets.
(Uu.A050/HAJM/A014)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
